She then, with a sweet smile, walked from the little dairy, and slowly approached the house of Sir Francis Hartleton. She paused as she neared it, and many anxious doubts and fears crossed her mind, concerning the result of an interview with the magistrate; to whom Jacob Gray’s mysterious bundle of papers was addressed, and above all, rose like a spectre, the still clinging horrible supposition that Jacob Gray might possibly be her father. She could not positively swear that he was not. In defiance of all probability he might have spoken the truth. She stood by the portico of the magistrate’s house, and her irresolution increased each moment that she strove to reason with her fears. “Dare I,” she thought, “run this dreadful risk? Heaven knows what that paper may contain which Gray sets such store by. Some awful history of crime and suffering, perchance, which would bring him to a scaffold and proclaim me the child of a murderer. Can I make conditions with the magistrates? Can I say to him, I will direct you to a packet addressed to yourself, containing, I know not what, which you can send a force, if necessary, to possess yourself of, but which you must act upon only so far as may be consistent with my feelings? Alas, no! I feel that such would not be acceded to, and I am tortured by doubts and anxieties—dreadful fears—Jacob Gray, what devil tempted you to raise so dreadful a supposition in my mind that you might be my father? And yet I do not, cannot believe you. No—but I doubt—ay doubt. There lies the agony! The fearful irresolution that cramped my very soul—cripples my exertions to be free, and makes me the unhappy, wretched thing I am. No, I cannot yet betray thee to death, Jacob Gray, although you would have taken my life, even while I slept unsuspectingly beneath your roof, I cannot, dare not yet betray thee.” Scarcely, in the confusion of other feelings, knowing whither she went, she passed the door of Sir Francis Hartleton’s house, nor paused till she found herself in the Bird Cage Walk, in St. James’s Park. It was still very early, but the fine bracing morning had attracted many pedestrians to the park, and the various walks were beginning to assume a gay appearance, the fashionable hour of promenading being then much earlier than it is at present.